November 30, 2006

Arkley's voodoo

by
MARCY BURSTINER

You can't underestimate
the level of Balloon Track paranoia. That's what recently hired
Times-Standard editor Rich Somerville told us exactly
two weeks before the election.

If you compare coverage by the Eureka Reporter
and the Times-Standard of the Rob Arkley-proposed shopping
center on the former railroad property, it seems as if both are
a bit prickly on the subject, and not just over whether to call
it a "tract" or a "track."

Somerville had referred to an Oct. 19 story in
the Eureka Reporter with the headline, "Balloon Track
Opinions Polled" and a subhead that read "Couple claiming
to be with Times-Standard surveys businesses along the Waterfront."
The Reporter's story told how some business owners felt
that the people "claiming" to be from the T-S
had tried to pressure them into admitting that they'd been pressured
into supporting the Marina Center development.

It turns out that the T-S had sent a team
of reporters to survey all the businesses in the vicinity of
the shopping center that Eureka Reporter owner Rob Arkley
has proposed for the Balloon Track. On Oct. 31, the T-S's
Ann Johnson-Stromberg explained that her paper decided to poll
businesses after "rumors surfaced over several months regarding
business owners being pressured." The T-S did find
a few people, unidentified in the story and accompanying poll,
who said that they felt they'd been pressured to support the
project and one person, also unidentified, who said that Rob
Arkley himself directly pressured him.

A week earlier, in explaining its decision to endorse
Larry Glass, Ron Kuhnel and Mike Jones for the Eureka City Council,
the T-S had this to say about the Balloon Track issue:
"The sides have lined up like the English and French at
Agincourt. Seems like everyone is being sucked into this longtime
political rivalry, whether they want to or not, and that includes
newspapers as well as candidates. It is assumed that The Eureka
Reporter, the Arkleys' free newspaper that went daily this
year, is the mouthpiece of the Marina Center. Therefore, says
conventional wisdom, the traditional paper in town, the Times-Standard,
must be the anti-Arkley publication ... In truth, for the record,
the Times-Standard has not made up its mind about the
Marina Center."

Since no one has asked my opinion on the issue,
I'm assuming I'm not the conventional wisdom that's been talking
that trash about the T-S. And speaking of paranoia, Kuhnel,
the candidate who won the endorsement of the T-S but whose
vote count as of the preliminary count fell 81 short of winning
the election, did ask my opinion, but not on the Marina Center.
He wondered how much effect a subliminal message in a newspaper
photo and story placement might have on undecided voters.

It turns out that the day before the election the
assumed mouthpiece of the Marina Center ran a front page story
with this headline: "Police investigating reported homicide
in Old Town." What, you say, does that have to do with either
the Balloon Track or the election? Well, above the headline was
a photo of the front of an S Street house where parolee Anthony
Evans had been found bleeding to death. Off to the side, and
clear as can be, are two campaign signs for Kuhnel and one for
La Vallee. On the other side of the house is a Halloween faux
gravestone and finally, crossing the driveway directly in the
path of the photographer Tyson Ritter's camera lens is a black
cat. So that frames, in the same photo, Kuhnel, La Vallee, a
gravestone and a black cat, all above the words "police"
and "homicide." And while I haven't sent a team of
reporters to survey people, I would bet that there are 81 registered
Eureka voters who get the willies when they see a black cat around
Halloween time.

Meanwhile, you didn't really need to assume that
the Eureka Reporter is the mouthpiece of the Marina Center
after reading the paper's Sept. 30 editorial on purchase of the
Balloon Track by the paper's owner. The 498-word editorial began
this way: "Rob and Cherie Arkley should be commended for
their purchase of the nearly 40-acre blighted, polluted and at
times dangerous Balloon Track." Further in the editorial
is this observation: "...the Arkleys' purchase signals a
positive, forward-looking era that will launch a small renaissance
of new businesses, new homes for existing businesses, some residences
and many jobs that go with all of the businesses that will hopefully
find a home at the Arkleys' proposed Marina Center."

I'd hate to be in Wendy Butler's shoes these days.
It was her job to cover Security National's news conference two
days earlier announcing the Balloon Track purchase, a conference
at which Cherie Arkley spoke and offered a champagne toast. (Although
I might have been more loath to be Ritter, whose job that day
was to take the photo of said toast.) When I used to write for
an online financial publication, I often wrote rather harsh articles
about one particular stock even though I knew it was a favored
holding of the publication's owner. I knew it because every time
I filed a story on it, he e-mailed me without fail to tell me
how much of an imbecile he thought I was. But that was at a time
when I could afford to lose my job. These days I have a 20-month-old
daughter to raise and bills to pay.

By the way, have I told you how great the HSU administration
is?

Marcy Burstiner is an assistant professor of
journalism and mass communication at HumboldtStateUniversity. She once taught Eureka Reporter photographer
Tyson Ritter, but as it was in a credit/no credit class she feels
no disclosure is necessary at this time.